worth waiting for
by TangibilityTurquoise8678
Summary: wendip/three stories about things that brought dipper and wendy closer. rated t for language and some scenes
1. Chapter 1

**dedication- **  
**this took forever, but would definitely not be possible without my fantastic Sophie. there's almost nobody in the world that means as much to me as you do, and I can't thank you enough for everything you do for me. this may be six months late, but in the grand scheme of things I think we have time because I have a feeling we'll be together a long, long time. we have beyond a lot of inside jokes, and I don't think I would be the person I am right now without you. this is super sap and ugly af but there's really nothing more I can say, I honestly love you so much &amp; am super grateful to have met you. this is my tribute to how we met, viva la wendip.**  
**-your mr. salamander**

* * *

If only Dipper hadn't opened the door.

There were plenty of old rooms in the Mystery Shack. Dipper and Mabel knew them all; they were in the Mystery Shack 24/7 for three full months straight. Wendy knew about a good number of them, too; she had been working there for years. But when Dipper couldn't find her when she was on the clock, there was only one room she would be in. So, when Dipper wanted to ask Wendy about a concert coming up in Gravity Falls and if the band playing was any good, and she wasn't at the cash register or in the bathroom, he went to the large room in the middle of the small, lost hallway. As he approached it, he heard mumbling from inside, so he assumed she was on the phone with one of her teen friends, as usual. That was NOT the case.

Dipper did not expect, when he opened the door, to see Wendy with both her shirt and bra off, with them laying a few feet away from her on the floor, facing away from him with her hand in Robbie's pants, pushed against the opposite wall.

He stifled a yelp as he watched Robbie, with his eyes closed, moan, "Wendy- oh, Wendy, I- oh my god, yes, Wendy, yes!" Wendy mumbled something Dipper couldn't make out and swallowed his own puke as they kissed, hard. Dipper felt the same way he did during the previous school year, when he tried watching porn and masturbating because of peer pressure. He felt like he did in that moment—like he was watching a really, really, bad porno, and that he needed to stop, immediately.

Dipper cleared his throat, which startled the pair. Robbie's eyes whipped open, and Wendy's head and a bit of her upper body whipped around, her eyes looking like a deer caught in a headlight. Dipper caught a glance of her breast before she hastily moved her arm to cover it, both of them blushing furiously at being caught.

"Ugh, this kid," Robbie complains.

Wendy looks down in shame, then looks back up to meet Dipper's eyes. "I'll- I'll be out in, like, 10 minutes, okay? Can you cover for me, Dipper?" He meekly nods, looking at his feet, and rushes out of the room, making sure to close the door behind him. As he walks away, he hears murmurs then a soft thud, meaning someone was pushed to the wall again. He shakes his head and retreats back to the gift shop, where Stan is standing, looking around. 

"Dipper! Where's Wendy? She's supposed to be manning the cash register!" Stan asks him, looking annoyed. Dipper's insides crack a little bit as he plays the part he always does, the fool: "She's in the bathroom. I don't think she feels all that great. I'll take the cash register until she gets back."

When Wendy and Robbie walk into the gift shop, acting casual but careful, Dipper quickly moves out from behind the cash register to the door, grabbing a leaf blower on his way out. He doesn't look at the pair of them once, nor does he talk to Wendy for the rest of the day, even after Robbie leaves. She doesn't try to talk to him, either.

That night, not for the first time, Dipper lay awake thinking about Wendy. He thinks about the way that the light reflected off Wendy's bare chest, the way the blush spread across her cheeks and through her ears and to her neck. He thinks about the way Robbie moaned her name, like it wasn't the first time he has done so. He thinks about her bra, lacey and unlike something it would seem to him she would normally wear, and wonders if she had planned that. Come to think about it, he thinks that day may have been some sort of an anniversary for them. He wonders how far they would have went in that room, how far they've already went, how far they went after he left. There was a couch in that room, after all. There was no limits, and a lock on the door. There's no telling what could have happened. Dipper's mind drifts back to Wendy's chest, and the way her breast looked. Even though he only saw one, he can imagine both. Easily. He feels the familiar feeling all pre-teen boys become best friends with as his pants tighten a bit, and he sighs and flips over. Mabel hears him, and clicks on a night light, sitting up.

"What's wrong, broseph?" she asks, looking a bit concerned. Dipper sits up as well, but is careful to keep his light blanket on his lap. Mabel notices but doesn't say anything, instead letting her eyes drift from his lap up to his face, scanning his face for any idea of what emotions he's feeling. He sighs again and scrunches his eyebrows, leaning back against the wall.

"Wendy again, huh?" she asks, used to their late-night talks about his infatuation with the redhead.

"Yeah, it's just—I walked in on her and Robbie, like, getting busy, you know, and it's just—it's really bothering me," he says, not even bothering to try to sugar coat it or hide what's wrong.

"How busy?" she asks.

"She was half naked with her hands inside his pants," he says. Mabel turns away.

"You can't act like you didn't know that she's gone to the nether regions of other boys, Dipper," she says. "You know she dates a lot of guys, you know how the sophomores back home are, and there's no way someone as smart as you wouldn't make assumptions. I'm not saying she's a slut, or anything, but there's no way you're surprised."

He's silent for a minute, then says, "Yeah, I guess so. Thanks, Mabe." She turns off the light in response. As an afterthought, she says, "Love you, Dipper."

"Love you too, Mabel." 

Dipper went on ignoring Wendy for three days, brushing off all of her comments and attempts to hang out with a single word or a short sentence. After it was clear Dipper would not be talking to her without her explaining herself to him without his prompting, Wendy followed him to the roof on his lunch break, leaving Mabel in charge of the gift shop.

Dipper sits on the opposite side of the roof to the entrance, feet dangling off the edge, staring at the horizon with a turkey sandwich in his lap, uneaten. Wendy stealthily darts across the roof and settles herself a few feet away from Dipper, her feet tucked underneath her. Dipper, clearly startled, turns towards her in alarm, slightly relaxing when he sees who it is.

"God, Wendy," he says, turning back to watch the over the trees. It's silent for a moment; he talked, but that's all he's going to say. He's waiting for her. She lets the silence go on for a bit longer, then clears her throat. He doesn't turn his head, but his neck perks up a bit, and his arms stiffen, so she knows he's listening.

"Dipper, are you seriously mad at me about walking in on- on Robbie and I?" she says, her ears turning as red as her hair. He nods slightly.

"Why? I mean, it's my relationship and my decisions. I know you and Robbie don't like each other, but can you be a good friend and try to get past it?" she pleads, putting emphasis on the word _friend._

Dipper sighs, then turns and looks Wendy in the eye for the first time in three days. "Okay, Wen. Just for you."

"Thanks, Dipper," Wendy says, and smiles at the use of his nickname for her and leans over and hugs him, a long hug that lingers a bit longer than was probably necessary. The only reason she pulls away is the arrival of Robbie at the door beneath them. Robbie squints up at them, and realization clearly writes jealously on his face.

"Wendy?" he says, half screeching. "Come down from there and that twerp and greet a real man!"

Dipper looks at Wendy and they share the understanding that no matter how hard Dipper tries, they'll never get along. So Dipper never tries, and maybe it's better that way.


	2. Chapter 2

It was the end of the summer, and Stan was the king of crappy parties. The town's favorite twins were going back to California, so of course the old man would throw a party in their honor. Most of the people of Gravity Falls had become quite fond of the kids, so the whole town showed up; even those who disliked the pair of kids showed up, if only just to party.

People were milling about, laughing loudly and sloshing the spiked drinks all over the grass. The kids behind the party sat at a picnic table, drinking punch and just enjoying each other's company.

"I guess this doubles as a birthday party," Dipper says.

"I guess it does. Do you think we should have told Soos and Stan?" Mabel asks.

"Well, they went through all this trouble anyways, why bother them with more?" Dipper asks.

"True. All we really need is each other, right, bro? Let's make a toast."

"Let's toast. To us, the newly promoted teens. Happy birthday, Mabe."

"Happy birthday, Dip. To us—long live the mystery twins!" Mabel yells, thrusting her cup against Dipper's, spilling punch all over the both of them. They laugh, and Dipper almost pees his pants when Soos startles them by saying, "Hey, it's you guys' birthdays? This calls for a celebration!"

Without waiting for an answer, he waddles up to the outdoor stage set up for the high school bands to play on, and grabs the mic, saying, "Hey doods, it happens to be the little people's birthday today!" Everyone turns and looks at him, and he in turn points at the pair, sitting at the table. Dipper's face is bright pink, and Mabel is eating up the attention. Soos starts counting: "1, 2, 3."

"Happy birthday to you," they all chorus. Dipper pulls his hat over his face.

"Happy birthday to you," the crowd sings again. Mabel blushes and sets her cup down.

"Happy birthday dear baby Pines kids," they sing. Dipper and Mabel look at each other and start laughing.

"Happy birthday to you," they finish, somebody throwing a cup at them. The cup hits Dipper on the head, bouncing off his head onto the table then rolling off. Mabel stands up, steps on the bench and climbs onto the table, yelling, "Thank you! Thank you all!" Dipper quickly pulls her down, blushing.

"Let's go get some more punch," he mumbles. They walk over to the table full of snacks and the punch bowl, and Mabel slowly starts ladling out punch for the both of them while chatting up the soon to be freshmen of Gravity Falls. While he stands there listening to Mabel's awful attempts to make a summer romance work, suddenly he has arms around him and hair in his face. Since the sun was going down, he couldn't tell the color of the hair or anything. He staggered at the shock, and heard a familiar laugh behind him.

"Happy birthday, you dork," Wendy said, pulling her arms off his eyes and away from around him. Shivering at the loss of her body heat around him in the chilling summer night, he turns around. They're close enough that he can smell her perfume and see the gloss of her chapstick on her lips, reflecting off the sunset behind him. She's wearing a flowy yellow top with a pink smiley face on it, with a brown belt and white shorts. She looks different like this, her hair flowing down into her face and brushing off her newly acquired glasses, which she had only gotten a week ago. Dipper rather liked her in glasses; he felt they reflected the intelligence her close friends knew she had. He also had somewhat of a glasses kink, as weird as it was.

"Thanks, Wen," he said, shrugging his shoulders out for a hug. Wendy concedes and throws her arms around his neck, squeezing him tight.

She lets go and says, "You should have told me it was you guys' birthdays today, I would have gotten you something. Now it's too late to go out and buy something and you guys leave tomorrow."

"Good. I wouldn't want you to waste your money, on me anyways." Dipper replies, blushing from the intensity of the hug. (He doesn't realize Mabel has ceased flirting behind him and is now watching the exchange quietly, mouthing only the words 'kiss him' very exaggeratedly to Wendy, pointing at her lips and making a duck face.)

"Well, it wouldn't be a waste, Dipper. It's for you, after all," she says, fidgeting with her glasses.

"Awh, Wen. Really though, don't waste money on me." he says. Before she can reply, Manly Dan staggers near, yelling, "Wendy! Time to go!" It's obvious he doesn't know where she is, and that will work to her advantage. She sighs.

"I guess this is goodbye, then," she says. She grabs a napkin from behind him off the table and a sharpie from her back pocket, scribbling on a napkin. She shoves it into his hand.

"My number," she says. "For, uh, after you leave." She's acting so awkward about their goodbye that it makes Dipper smile.

"Thanks, Wendy. I- uh, I'm really gonna miss you a lot," he stammers.

"Wendy!" Manly Dan yells.

"I'll miss you too, Dipper." She pulls him into another huge hug, and when she pulls away, she leans in and quickly kisses him on the cheek. She then goes and hugs Mabel, saying, "Get my number from Dipper, okay? I'll miss you," and runs into the crowd, hair flowing behind her, and then as fast as she was there she's gone, like the smell of rain or the dew on grass.


	3. chapter 3

After the summer ended, Dipper and Wendy never stopped talking. With the phone Dipper got from his parents at the end of the summer for his birthday, they texted in all of their spare time. They video chatted on the weekends. They talked for hours on end because they each had their own drama and frankly, to the other, they were home.

As the end of the semester quickly approached, Wendy had been getting stressed out about her final exams. They were worth 25% of her already-not-that-great grade in classes Dipper usually helped her in, and without him physically there to explain, he frequently got calls asking about sin, cos &amp; tangent, 3D vectors and countless other topics. He was starting to get worried about her, and figured she needed a break, or at least someone to help her in person. (She refused to get help from her teachers or a tutor, because her headstrong independent nature and pride had her saying, "No, I get it, I just need a little more time.")

After going over the idea with Mabel first, then getting it cleared by his parents, he called Wendy. She picked up after 4 dials.

"Hey, Dip, what's new?"

"Uh, Wendy, I had a question for you."

Pause.

"Sure, what's up?"

"Do you know all the stuff you need to for your finals next week?"

Pause.

"Ummm… about that… well, I-"

"Would you want to come over to visit Mabel and I this weekend?"

Pause. Long pause.

"I would have to see. But hanging out sounds like it may not be the best idea right now, and the holidays are coming up and I've been working to get enough money to buy everyone presents, so I don't know.."

"Look. Bring your books, I can help you in person way better than I can help you through video chat. And I haven't seen you since the summer. Please?"

Pause.

"Okay."

"Thanks, Wen! And you could have Stan drive you- it's been a while since we've seen him- and-"

Laughter from the other end. "Dipper, I haven't even asked yet! Look, I'll ask at dinner tonight. Okay?"

"Okay! I'll text you later. Bye Wendy!"

She hangs up with a smile on her face, but it quickly fades as she wonders what she just got herself into.

They're having casserole for dinner that night. She knows because she's the one who's cooking. As usual. She's always cooked. Her dad's always in the bar after work anyways. If she doesn't cook, nobody will, and she has brothers who need feeding.

She makes sure that everything is just how her dad likes it to be. She really wants to go visit the twins. She misses Mabel's overenthusiasm and headache-causing optimism, and how incredibly boy crazy she was. She misses Dipper's determination and over-the-top-curiosity and how blushy he gets whenever anyone catches him staring at her. She misses their twin dynamic and how much they trusted each other with everything without a second thought, and she sighs, wishing not for the first time that she had a twin.

Wendy's thoughts are interrupted by the sound of her dad slamming a door, probably breaking it in the process. She suppresses the urge to sigh and turns and brings the casserole to the table, giving her dad a cautious glance. Good. He doesn't seem to look any more constipated than usual, so he's probably in a good mood. She greets him and calls her brothers in for dinner, serving her dad more than her brothers purposely. She usually gives everyone equal amounts and lets them fight over whatever's left over, but she makes sure to let her dad see her giving him extra.

Wendy's brothers have their usual pointless idiotic arguments over dinner, letting their dad pick the winners and the losers get a punches to the face. When the conversation lulls as her youngest brother goes off to nurse his wounds and her other brothers follow, fighting as they run, she takes the opportunity to steal her father's attention.

"Dad?" she asks, confident but not cocky. The first thing she learned from her family is that being self-conscious is being weak. If she looks or sounds afraid, she'll never get anything.

"What?" he asks, distracted, picking his teeth in the window next to him.

"Can I leave town this weekend?''

He's still not paying attention. "Yeah, whatever. Where are you going? And you're not taking my truck."

So he was paying attention. But she's caught off guard for another reason. "You're letting me go? I mean, of course you are. I'm going to visit Dipper and Mabel. You know, Stan's twins."

He turns towards her and nods. "Okay. Find a ride, and you can go. As far as your brothers know, you're at Tambry's."

"Thanks, Dad," she says, getting up to collect the dinner dishes.

"Yeah, whatever," he says, obviously not engaged anymore. As soon as he leaves, she pulls out her phone and texts Dipper.

_whats ur address ?_

Thursday could not pass fast enough. She was skipping school Friday to go on the 9-hour drive from Gravity Falls to the twins' hometown of Piedmont, in California. After talking to all of her teachers after class to get review packets and makeup work for what she was missing, and not being able to keep still all day in class, after school she finally got a chance to explain to her friends what she was doing that weekend.

"Hey, Wendy, what are you doing this weekend? I thought we should, uh, go see a movie. Together. Alone." Robbie said in his ultra-annoying "I'm so much better than everyone else, you should be honored to know me" voice. Wait, who was she kidding; that was how he talked, all the time. Another thing she hated about him.

"Ugh, Robbie, go away." Wendy said, moving to the other side of Tambry as she walked up to the pair.

"Wendy, look-" Tambry cut him off by saying, "Ugh, Robbie, you're so pitifully desperate. No means no, man." Tambry was always on her phone instead of talking in real life, so when she spoke that made it more meaningful. Wendy shot her a glance of thanks as the rest of her same-grade friends walked up to them.

"I'm busy this weekend anyways, I'm going to visit Dipper and Mabel." She waited to see her friend's reactions.

"Those twins from the convenience store?" Thompson asked.

"Those are the ones," Wendy said.

"Oh. Okay then, send us pictures. Or don't, we don't really care," Lee said. Nate punched him in the arm.

"That's so rude, dude, you can't just say that!"

"Well, you've said worse things to your mom!"

"How is my mom important to any of this? If we're talking about moms, you'll love to hear what she told me in bed last night—"

"Oh my god, you two, shut the hell up," Wendy said. She spotted Stan's old station wagon and waved at him, signaling she's coming. "I have to go, have fun shoving the candy of your choice in any combination of Thompson's holes."

"You'll love to hear what I shoved in Lee's mom's hole last night," Nate said. They started arguing as she walked away. God, did she need a break.

She walked over to Stan's car, greeted him, jumped in the back seat (because Soos was in the passenger seat; he missed the twins a lot too, so he was going to visit the same amount of time Stan did, which was for the night) and pulled her earbuds out of her backpack, plugging them into her phone as she started playing her music. Right now, some alternative rock band was playing. She used the pillow pet she used for her back in class to sleep for the ride, letting the pound of the drums and the vibration of the bass in her ears pull her into the depths of sleep.

Wendy woke to the bump of Stan's old car over a curb and into the driveway of a two story house with neat Christmas lights around the edge of the house. There was a wreath over the garage, and a broken garden gnome in the landscaping. After hearing the tales Dipper and Mabel told, she guessed they broke it as soon as they got home. Stan's soft chuckle confirms he saw it, too.

She sees an upstairs light turn off, and a lower floor light turn on. Even though they made really good time here due to Stan's incredibly reckless driving (Wendy's very surprised they didn't get pulled over), it's still half past 9. One of the twins' parents works night shifts, although Wendy's not sure which. Dipper has a strict bedtime for himself during the school year; he wakes up extra early for his 7:30 start time school, and has a bus to catch on top of that. 5:30 is early, and Dipper believes in sleeping to get good grades. He's never caught dead up after 9:00 on a school night, and he has school tomorrow. Mabel just likes sleeping, so it's probably not her, either.

Stan, Soos, and Wendy walk up to the door, and Wendy softly knocks. There's almost no pause to where the door flies open to reveal Mabel, in one of her specialty sweaters. She's mixed it up and is wearing leggings with it, though. Wendy is secretly glad, because those skirts weren't exactly the best fit for Mabel. They rarely matched her sweaters, and they were tight skirts. Mabel didn't exactly have anything to be showing off when it came to below the belt.

Mabel swiftly looks behind her, and pushes the front glass door open for the three of them. She's as quiet as a mouse as she runs out behind them, pushing the trio into the front door and grabbing the car keys out of Stan's hands as she slips on a pair of shoes from next to the door on and runs outside. She pulls open the trunk and grabs the suitcase for Stan and Soos, and snags Wendy's duffel bag with her other hand. She flips onto her hands on top of the two pieces of luggage and closes the trunk with her feet, flipping back down and grabbing the keys from the trunk hole and shoving them into her palm as she grabs the duffel bag and stacks it onto the suitcase and runs, pulling the suitcase behind her. She does most of this in under 20 seconds, minus the tripping over the doorstep at the 23 second mark as she tries to run inside. She stands up, puts the luggage in front of the three of them, takes off Dipper's shoes and closes the door behind them, exhaling loudly. Soos, Stan and Wendy look at each other in pure amazement until she squeals loudly, and starts fussing over Stan and Soos.

As Mabel comments over how much weight Soos has lost and how much facial hair Stan has, Wendy looks around. To her right lies a staircase, which she sees leads upstairs from between the bars of the railing preventing people from falling over the edge of the upstairs hallway into the hallway in front of her, which leads to what is, by Wendy's guess, the kitchen, dining room, and living room. To her left is a TV room, with neat pictures of the twins littering all of the walls. Wendy is broken out of her spell by Mabel's voice saying, "WENDY!"

She turns just in time to see Mabel flying at her. She's tackled to the door by one of Mabel's infamous flying tackle hugs, which brings her down to the floor on top of her backpack. Once she regains the breath knocked out of her, she coughs out, "Jesus, Mabel, trying to kill me much?" and Mabel rolls off her and helps her up.

"It's been FOREVER, Wen- did you get taller? And is your hair darker? Do you have more freckles? No, same amount of freckles. But you're definitely taller." Mabel's familiar thinking out loud is a comfort Wendy didn't realize she missed. She quickly assesses Mabel, too. She has a fading streak of pink dye in the hair framing her face, and her hair is slightly shorter. She got a haircut. She's definitely taller, and her chest filled out a lot. She also seems to have developed a nervous fidget, because she has not stopped moving since Wendy first saw her. She stops Mabel's rambling, which has turned into her commenting on Wendy's new boots, by pulling her into a hug.

"Hey, kid," she mumbles into her hair. It smells like watermelon. Mabel squeezes her.

"I really missed you, Wendy," she says. "I have bunches to tell you."

Mabel pulls back when she hears footsteps. Presumably the Pines father's face peers at them from the side of the wall. Once he seems to have assessed their identities, he comes to greet them.  
"Hey, Stan," he says, pushing his arm out to shake Stan's hand. Stan shakes his hand.

"It's been a while, Steve." Stan says. Steve rubs the back of his neck.

"Sure has. You must be Wendy, and that's probably Soos. Nice to meet you two, I'm Steve Pines, call me Steve, I've heard so much about you guys," he says, shaking both of their hands.

Wendy blushes as Soos says, "Nice to meet you too, dude. Can I use the bathroom?"

Steve laughs. "Straight up the stairs and it's straight in front of you. Try not to wake up Dipper."

Stan and Steve start talking about gas prices and the weather as Mabel starts to drag Wendy upstairs.

"I'm giving her a tour!" she calls over her shoulder, as if anybody's listening.

Mabel quickly starts rambling about how idiotic it was to start upstairs, and tells her to stay out as she runs into a room and grabs a bandana and ties it around Wendy's eyes. She pulls her back down the stairs and around some corners, and down another flight of stairs. These ones are cold, and Wendy's glad she didn't take off her shoes. Mabel pulls off her blindfold to reveal paint and paintings everywhere. "This is my dad's studio," she says, gesturing around. There's one painting that catches Wendy's eye. It's a picture of Mabel and Dipper as toddlers, young enough that their hair is the same ear length cut. They're standing on a beach, waves crashing all around them as they sit on rocks. But the waves can't touch the twins. They're too busy laughing at something just said, a joke that Wendy will never know and that she probably wouldn't laugh at anyways. But that intrigues her, because as much as she'll never admit it, she loves art. Or looking at and for it, at least.

Mabel catches her looking around.

"Pretty neat, huh?" Wendy just nods, still looking around. If her dad painted all of these, he's amazing. She can see how they can afford such a nice house. It's probably triple the size of her own house, and they have half the amount of kids. Not that two isn't a handful. She's seen how bad Dipper and Mabel can get.

"Well, next stop!" Mabel grabs her hand and pulls her up the stairs. Living room with a big TV and a bigger house. Dining room with a bowl of fruit on the table. Kitchen with everything she liked in the pantry.

"Help yourself," Mabel says as she closes the door and pulls Wendy into the next room. Wendy thinks she just might.

An office with a rolling chair and a computer. A family room with a shelf of board games in the corner. She hadn't seen that in her first glance at the big room with another large TV and two couches. Mabel pulls her up the stairs. "These are the stairs," she explains unnecessarily; Wendy stifles a laugh. They stop on the last step. To the right, the twins' parents' bedroom. Straight, the bathroom. On the side of the bathroom is a guest bedroom. She already hears Soos and Stan in there, so when Mabel says there's another guest bedroom on the left of that, Wendy assumes it's going to be hers for the weekend. At the end of the hallway, Dipper's room. On the opposite wall, Mabel's room.

The other guest bedroom is, indeed, her room. There's a halfhearted "Welcome, Wendy" banner strung up in there, along with the backpack she shed when she got inside the door and the duffel bag from the trunk. It's a large room, with a bunk bed and a closet obscured by a curtain. Other than that and filler pictures on the wall, it's empty.

"You can use the closet and drawers, if you want." She didn't really want to. That meant work.

Next, Mabel showed Wendy her room. It was bigger than Wendy's, with posters all over the wall. She recognizes Sev'ral Timez, but all of the rest of them are unfamiliar to her. She has pale pink walls, a zebra print comforter, lots of pillows and her closet seems to have been expanded into her own studio like her dad's, but for everything arts and crafts. Considering how many sweaters she knows Mabel has, she's surprised she can afford to lose the closet space. There's a loose painting on the wall over her bed. The painting itself turns out to be the same one of her and her brother from the basement, but underneath it is a large hole in the wall her and her brother made to pass notes in the night since they share exactly half a bedroom wall. Mabel explains all of this as Wendy lays down on her bed, and thinks to herself that she could sleep right there.

Mabel half wakes her (because she was only half asleep) by saying, "Wendy! You can't sleep yet, you haven't seen Dipper's room yet!" Mabel pulls her up and pulls her into the room at the end of the hall.

Dipper's room is dark, as people usually leave them dark as they sleep. Mabel disrupts it by turning the light on to reveal dark blue walls, high ceilings, a bunk bed with a desk underneath, and collage boards everywhere. There's also a few pictures on the mirror above his dresser and on the walls above it. Wendy sees herself in some of them.

"Won't this wake him up?" Wendy whispers.

"Nah, he's a heavy sleeper." Mabel says, gesturing to him, talking as loud as she normally would. Dipper was lying in a bed with a dark blue comforter that exactly matched the walls, with pale yellow accents like a stripe in the comforter and pillowcases. He was surrounded by various stuffed animals, including the panda duck he won her, which she gifted to him at the end of the summer as a remember-me present. As she was looking at him, he starts stirring. Mabel sighs.

"DIPPER! WAKE UP!" Mabel yells, which startles Dipper into sitting up immediately. He rubs his eyes, not fully awake. He leans over the edge of his bed to look at Mabel, who is under his bed sitting on the desk.

"Mabel, what the hell are you—WENDY!" He is so surprised to see her that he physically falls over the side of his bed onto the carpeted floor, which makes Wendy laugh so hard she hits her head on the underside of his bed and causes her to fall to the floor, laughing even harder. She crawls over to him, both of them laughing harder than they had in a while. Wendy has tears in her eyes as she asks, "Oh my god, Dipper, you fucking idiot, are you okay?" and in between his wheezes Dipper manages to say, "Yeah, I'm fine, I'm just a gigantic dumbass," which makes them laugh even harder and just as they thought they were done laughing they hear Mabel's cries of "Oh my god, you two are so stupid," through her laughter and they're laughing all over again. 25 minutes and one spilled glass of water later, they all finally calm down and sit cross-legged in a triangle on Dipper's floor.

"Mabel, I thought you said he was a heavy sleeper," Wendy says.

Mabel shrugs. "I thought by saying it, it would be a self-proclaimed prophecy or whatever it's called."

"A self-fulfilling prophecy, you mean?" Dipper says. "That only applies if it's about yourself, and whether or not you're a heavy or light sleeper isn't something that affects it." Mabel only sighs in response, used to losing her arguments against her brother.

Wendy leans against Dipper's bed ladder. "I just wish I got that on video," she says wistfully. "We could have gotten rich from that." That starts Mabel into a small fit of giggling, not unlike the kind you would hear from behind closed doors when she had a sleepover with Candy and Grenda in the Mystery Shack and one of them brought something for those a bit older than them, whether it be romance novels, magazines with mostly (or occasionally, fully) naked models, or stupid games of Cards Against Humanity. Dipper smacks the back of her head, which makes her stop. They all sigh in unison, still smiling. They are all tired and overexcited, and Wendy is more than content to sleep.

"Well, this was a conclusive end to the tour," Wendy says, breaking the ice.

"Definitely," Mabel says, laying down on the floor. Just as Wendy knew she would be, within three minutes Mabel is sound asleep, leaving just Wendy and Dipper.

"Let me check your crib out," Wendy says. She stands up and looks around, walking over to his dresser. The pictures on his dresser are of him and Mabel back in Gravity Falls, a picture of that painting of the twins as toddlers, a picture of four of his other school friends on Halloween with Mabel photobombing in the background, a picture of Dipper and some girl from his school. Sitting on his dresser next to the photos yet to be put up was a crumpled napkin.

"Dipper, this is nasty. Throw away your-" she cuts herself off when the napkin falls open. It's the same napkin she gave him four months prior, with her phone number, her name with a large, messy heart next to it, and her tinted chapstick kiss mark. She turns to him.

"You still have this?" she asks, her voice quiet.

"Of course," he says, matching her tone. "I have it memorized, but I- just in case." How sweet he is never fails to amaze Wendy, and she steps forward and tentatively puts her arms around him. He hugs her back, and it reminds her of the last time she saw him, when she kissed him right after they hugged. She didn't do this now; she pulled away and said, "Explain these pictures."

He points to the one of him and Mabel in Gravity Falls. "This was from when Mabel and I had just figured our first conspiracy moment out. Soos took the picture." Indeed, you could see his thumb in the corner of the picture if you looked hard enough.

He moves on to the next picture. "This is the first and only painting out dad has ever done of us," he explains. That would explain why that's the only painting of them she's seen in the house.

The next picture, he explains, is him and his best friends on Halloween. Since he has the biggest house, they all went to his house after school, and although him and Mabel matched costumes, it was the first year they didn't go trick or treating together.

The last picture was of him and a girl Dipper called Patty. "Patty, ah, she's, well, my ex-girlfriend," he says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You got a girlfriend and didn't tell me?" she asked, a bit hurt.

"Nah, she's one of my sister's friends. I just wanted to see what you would do if I said that," Dipper says, smiling sheepishly. Wendy sighs and tells him not to explain the three other pictures with her in them; she already knows the story behind them. He then moves one of the pictures slightly and a smaller sized picture falls from behind one of the bigger ones. He hands her his school picture, and she can't help but laugh.

"Dipper, your nose looks huge in this. Not as big as Robbie's, but huge all the same," she says, still laughing. Dipper feigns hurt as he says, "How dare you?" then promptly bursts out laughing.

"What?" she demands, poking him in the shoulder.

"Remember that one time I walked in on you and Robbie getting nasty?" he says, putting his hands in front of him as if to block a punch from her.

"Ugh, don't remind me," she says, cringing at the memory. "Robbie was just ew. I sorta feel like he only dated me to get in my pants," she continues.

"Probably. He's a dick," Dipper says.

"Second that," Wendy replies. She sits down, and Dipper sits next to her. He hesitiates, then puts his arms around her. She doesn't hesitate in putting her arms around him too, so they're sitting on the floor with their arms wrapped around each other. Eventually the night catches up to them, and they both fall asleep; Dipper wakes up at exactly 5:30 to his alarm with Wendy laying on his stomach. He sits up, thinking about all the times over the summer he thought about kissing Wendy. Now was his chance, and so he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

Someday, he thought. And so he quietly woke her, helping the half-asleep 16 year old into the guest bed. He could live with waiting, because there's nobody else he could imagine waiting for.

* * *

fin-


End file.
